'The Recruiter’

NAOMI KING Staff Writer

Sunday

Jul 27, 2008 at 8:00 AM

Sgt. 1st Class Clay Usie of Houma says he approached the mission of recruiting soldiers during wartime with intensity and compassion. A documentary set for release Monday on HBO follows the now-33-year-old Usie as he prepares and trains four recruits in Houma to become soldiers.

HOUMA -- Sgt. 1st Class Clay Usie of Houma has faced his share of challenges, but he said he approached the mission of recruiting soldiers during wartime with intensity and compassion.

A documentary set for release Monday on HBO follows the now-33-year-old Usie as he prepares and trains four recruits in Houma to become soldiers.

In the process, Usie became a mentor and motivator for many of the recruits, including Cpl. Matthew Marks, an H.L. Bourgeois graduate who has been on recruiting duty in Houma since May. Other featured recruits include Terrebonne High graduate Bobby Barrios, Central Lafourche High graduate Chris Daigle and H.L. Bourgeois graduate Lauren Thorton.

Marks, now 21, said he still looks up to Usie. In the film, Usie stands in Marks’ wedding to high-school sweetheart Jessica.

Director Edet Belzberg, whose work has earned several awards, an Oscar nomination and a spot in the Sundance Film Festival, said she wanted to make a film that would help her understand why people join the military and that would look at their lives before doing so.

"We can all remember being 17 and 18 and it’s a really difficult time and you are making difficult decisions and you want someone to help and guide you," Belzberg said in a phone interview. "For me, it was very important to understand and see the transition from teenager to soldier. And the reason kids join is an important process, and to understand for us in America, why our children are joining."

Living in New York at the start of the Iraq war, Belzberg said she felt disconnected from the war while reading the names of fallen soldiers in newspapers.

"Houma, when I would come there, I felt I was in a country at war. You felt that everyone had some type of relationship with what’s

happening," Belzberg said. "Those names, they were not anonymous to me anymore. ...

"I hope that everyone would feel that connection to the people who are serving, the families who are experiencing it."

Belzberg decided to focus on Houma-bred Usie because she read about his earning the 2004 Army Times Soldier of the Year as the top recruiter in his battalion and one of the best in the nation.

The documentary was shot over the course of a year, starting in 2004.

During his three years as a recruiter, Usie recruited 72 soldiers when his quota was 30.

He has been in the military for nearly 13 years.

"I don’t necessarily attribute success to how many guys I got to join the army," Usie said. "I attribute it to how I served and represented the Army."

Along with serving in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Usie has served three tours of duty in Afghanistan.

Usie said his success as a recruiter was not the result of incessant pestering or slick sales pitches.

For Usie, the task was a mission that he wholeheartedly believes in.

"I was very forthright in my mission, no different than if I’m in a mission in Afghanistan," Usie said. "We’re an all-volunteer force, and without the military recruiter, we do not have men and women who stand in the ranks to protect."

Recruiting is not the easy desk job some people believe it is either, he said. Most recruiters have served in combat, so they can give true accounts to enlistees.

Usie said he never sugar-coated the realities of military life because the recruits needed to make informed decisions.

Asked if he felt the film accurately portrayed him, Usie said it did, for the most part.

"I feel that in certain situations that I was. In some situations, all the food wasn’t presented on the table," Usie said about each recruit’s circumstances and family life. "But the vast majority of the film I think portrayed the reality of military recruiting."

Usie certainly didn’t hold back. In the film, he has his frustrations.

"My convictions are strong and opinionated," Usie said. "I believe I was called into service for a higher purpose."

His parents, Donna and Randy Usie, a Terrebonne Parish sheriff’s deputy, said they always knew their son was meant to be a soldier.

"Of course, during wartime it was a worry," Donna said about her son joining in 1995. "I just know he was born to be a soldier."

Currently on leave, Usie’s spending time with family and friends in Houma before reporting for duty in August at Fort Benning, Ga., to serve with the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Usie said he couldn’t be as successful without the support of his family -- including his wife, 34-year-old Tammy, and daughters, 15-year-old Kirstin and 14-year-old Randi.

In the film, he and Tammy must cancel a family vacation because of a military event.

But as Usie explained, scheduling conflicts happen in any dual-career marriage.

But Tammy has always been his best battle buddy and has stood behind him.

At his parents’ home near Coteau Road and La. 24 in Houma this week, Usie sat in the living room filled with deer antlers, mounted fish and family pictures.

In this relaxed family environment, Usie wore flip-flops but still displayed his unwavering patriotism with flare.

He wore a white T-shirt with the American flag inside the words "Tap Out America," imposed with the Declaration of Independence in the background. Instead of bedtime stories, his father, Randy, read him history, Usie said.

At the Armed Forces Career Center in Houma, Cpl. Matthew Marks is filling Usie’s boots and even resurrecting the Future Soldiers Program, which prepares recruits like he once was for basic training.

A relatively soft-spoken man, he said he’s worried viewers might walk away from the film with bad impressions of recruiting.

For instance, not everyone goes into combat, he said. Marks said he also felt the documentary and the media coverage of it has portrayed him as only having the Army as an option after high school.

His grades were good enough to go to college on a TOPS scholarship, Marks said, but he followed his long-time goal to join the Army instead.

Now a homeowner with his first child on the way, Marks said he still enjoys the challenges of being a soldier, whether physical demands or recruiting demands.

"It’s about defending our freedom," Marks said.

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